“I assure you, cousin, you may rely upon my discretion. Since Leonora’s absence there is no one but yourself to talk to.”
“Thank you, madam, for the implication,” retorted the old lady, rising and executing an extraordinary courtesy with her most witchlike expression, then sitting down again: “The Governor, my cousin, is of your mind. Poor man, he confides in me, and I would not betray his confidence. But you are a foreigner—forgive the phrase, as it only means that you will understand without being prejudiced—and I run no risk in telling you what he said to me. It was more to ease his mind than to obtain advice; for which I was properly grateful, as I had only sympathy and not counsel in the simples of my pharmacy.”
While she discoursed in this illustrative strain the listener said to herself:
“Lord, will she never come to the point? What a garrulous old parroquet.”
Then aloud:
“Your introduction is perfumed with interest. I am more curious to hear than ever. What has happened, or is going to happen, that excites your sympathy, or would justify advice? (I will let her see that I can turn an English period as glibly as herself!)”
“Well, then, to be brief, Mistress Geoffrey, Captain Grantham is coming home. Hence the arrival, post-haste, of the Governor at a time that affairs of state should have detained him in the capital.”
“Captain Grantham? Who is he?”
“A well-known officer in the French army. A personal friend of Prince Eugène de Beauharnais.”
“Ah, yes; I saw him once in Paris. A very young man at that time. But handsome, gallant and dashing. Altogether the Frenchman.”